


Circle

by rageprufrock



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 01:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, The one where John is a girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circle

He'd looked ridiculous and scruffy as a guy but all of it's muted now, white skin and dark hair and his muddled eyes look luminous in his face, framed in his own dark lashes. He's not bad looking--according to everybody on Atlantis anyway, though God knows they're probably trying to keep him from drowning himself off the south pier. His arms feel spindly and his legs feel thick and he has fragile curves in places that never felt fragile on the women John has known. All of the flaws he registered on his own body--old scars, a fold of skin, imperfections that hadn't really mattered all that much--look silvery and strange against his own skin, and he wonders if this is how women look at themselves all the time: magnified.

He walked around for the first three days after the accident in the labs feeling astonished by himself, and now he walks aroung being astonished by all the women who he know.

So he's grateful when they go back to the Lord of the Flies planet to check on John's favorite wards, a light mission to ease him back into active duty, and a small mountain of children rush toward and then stop short in front of him, uncertain and off-kilter. They are easily placated by explanation, and afterward stop seeing a different John, crowding around him--her for stories. The girls braid his hair and weave in flowers and John lets them get away with it, because their small, round fingers feel soft and cool against his face and they are all so sweet. The boys roughhouse with one another and after a little initial coaxing, start playing catch with John, too, though they suddenly rush toward him with cuts and scrapes and newfound confidence that John will heal them with the magic of Johnson and Johnson.

It makes something in his stomach flip-flop, to realize that all children go instinctively to women to be fixed, for their hurts to be kissed away, and John feels weirdly honored to be inducted into that pantheon--for however brief a time.

He's glad it's only him and Teyla on this trip, a brief, two-day-er where he'll sleep in the treehouses and play with the children and lean how to be a little more comfortable in his own skin because John's tired of being tired from being angry and humiliated and feeling wronged, of making women he respects look hurt and angry with him when he bursts out yelling about how much he hates this body and misses his dick. He's tired of getting weird looks from his Marines and of relearning the new constraints of his new construction, of learning how to walk all over again. He's tired of watching Rodney puff up and try to defend him and tired of throwing Ronon and his subordinates in the brig for fighting over things John doesn't even want to know about, but knows they're about him. He's glad Elizabeth said, "Go--get off of Atlantis for a few days. Take Teyla and don't worry. We'll hold down the fort."

"You look happier," Teyla says gently at the end of the first day, and John figures it's true.

"Well," he says, and ducks his head, feels long strands of hair escape from the flowered braids, pulled away from his face.

Teyla laughs and tucks them behind John's ears, says, "This will not last forever, John." And when John looks up to catch her kind eyes, there are crinkles at the corners, and he smiles shyly back when she says, "Learn from it what you can, do not let it cause you any further pain, and--" Teyla stops for effect, her eyes shining "--stop teasing poor Dr. McKay. If Atlantis continues to experience blackouts because you are poking at your breasts and complaining in the labs..." she trails off but the implication is clear.

John flashes her a perfectly innocent expression. "I don't know what you're talking about," he lies.

Fucking with Rodney's head is one of the few absolute upsides of this situation. That and making Ronon walk into walls.

Teyla smiles and looks up, at the blue heavens and stars dotting the sky, to the two moons in orbit of the planet like lovers dancing through the sky and John lays back in a bed of earth-smelling leaves, wet with evening dew and breaths in and out until black closes in and when he wakes up, the sun will be streaming and it will be another day.


End file.
